For the first three posts in this series, I've described egregores as an emergent phenomenon related to group psychology. However, that's not how occultists view egregores. In occult circles, the egregore is a psychic or astral entity that is created by the group. The goal of this effort is to create an astral, psychic ally.
Here's how Tomberg describes this, in light of his history with occultists and esotericists:
[A]s well as bad egregores good ones can equally well be engendered through collective will and imagination, i.e. "good demons" are engendered in exactly the same way as evil ones. According to this thesis, all depends upon the engendering will and imagination: if they are good, they engender positive egregores; if they are bad, they engender negative egregores. There are, according to this thesis, good "artificial demons" as well as bad ones--just as their are good and bad thoughts.
From a practical point of view this thesis gives rise to a practice where one endeavors to collectively create an egregore for this special purpose: as a "group spirit" or a spirit of the fraternity concerned. This egregore once created, it is believed that one is able to rely on it and that one has an efficacious magical ally in it. It is believed that every group has an active "group spirit" which renders it influential with regard to the outside world as well as with regard to its members. It is believed that real and effective traditions are, in the last analysis, only strong and well-nourished egregores, which live and act across the ages.
As Tomberg goes on to say, even churches have egregores which are "generated by the collective will and imagination of the believers."
This view of egregores is more controversial than what I have been describing over the first three posts. Specifically, people may be willing to admit that there are top-down, emergent properties that affect human groups, collectives, and cultures. But the occultist believes more than that. The occultist believes that the egregore is a real conscious entity. That's a much stronger and more controversial claim. I'll turn to that controversy in the next post. But before I do I want to make some connections between how Tomberg describes egregores and the work of the late Walter Wink.
As I've shared many times before, Wink argues that the dualism of the ancients, where spiritual powers are believed to exist above or over physical powers below on earth, is difficult to maintain for many modern disenchanted believers. To keep us tethered to the ancient imagination, Wink suggests we retain the spiritual/physical dualism by trading in the Up/Down spatial metaphor of the ancients for an Inside/Outside metaphor. That is, social, cultural, institutional, organization, and political structures have an inner spirituality that animates, holds together, and perpetuates the collective structure. Here is Wink describing this:
What I propose is viewing the spiritual Powers not as separate heavenly or ethereal entities but as the inner aspect of material or tangible manifestations of power...the "principalities and powers" are the inner or spiritual essence, or gestalt, of an institution or state or system; that the "demons" are the psychic or spiritual powers emanated by organizations or individuals or subaspects of individuals whose energies are bent on overpowering others; that "gods" are the very real archetypal or ideological structures that determine or govern reality and its mirror, the human brain...and that "Satan" is the actual power that congeals around collective idolatry, injustice, or inhumanity, a power that increases or decreases according to the degree of collective refusal to choose higher values.
This sounds very similar to Tomberg's description of the egregore. As Wink puts it above, demons "are the psychic or spiritual powers emanated by organizations." In fact, like Tomberg, Wink argues that the "angels" of the seven churches of Asia who are addressed in Revelation are examples of this phenomenon. That is, the "angel" of the church is the "good egregore," the collective spiritual power created and emanated from the church. As Wink writes:
It would appear that the angel is not something separate from the congregation, but must somehow represent it as a totality. Through the angel, the community seems to step forth as a single collective entity or Gestalt. But the fact that the angel is actually addressed suggests that it is more than a mere personification of the church, but the actual spirituality of the congregation as a single entity. The angel would then exist in, with, and under the material expression of the church's life as it interiority. As the corporate personality or felt sense of the whole, the angel of the church would have no separate existence apart from the people. But the converse would be equally true: the people would have no unity apart from the angel. Angel and people are the inner and outer aspects of one and the same reality. The people incarnate or embody the angelic spirit; the angel distills the invisible essence of their totality as a group. The angel and the congregation come into being together and, if such is their destiny, pass out of existence together. The one cannot exist without the other.
There's a lot here, in Wink's description of the "angel" of a church, or any organization, that fits with the esoteric description of the egregore. Just like there can be good versus bad egregores there can be good versus bad "angels" inhabiting groups, organizations, and nations.
That said, there is a key ontological distinction between Wink's description of "angels" versus the esotericist's egregore. Wink seems to think that the angel/egregore comes into existence spontaneously and as an emergent property with the formation of the group as a collective. With the esotericist egregore, by contrast, at least in some conceptions, the entity is "summoned" or "manifested" by the group though an act of intention and will, as a practice of occult magic. Again, we'll talk about this ontological issue in the final post.
Another connection between Tomberg and Wink is how both connect "collective spirits" with ideologies. For example, Tomberg describes Marxism as an egregore (and it's helpful to note that Tomberg was writing in the midst of the Cold War):
With respect of generation effected collectively, the demon--which in this case is known by the term egregore--is likewise the product of will and imagination, which in this case are collective. The brith of such an egregore in modern times is known to us:
"A spectre is haunting Europe--the spectre of communism"--such is the first phrase of the Communist Manifesto...
What I am saying here concerning the generation of the most imposing modern egregore is in perfect accord with Marxist teaching itself. Because for Marxism there is no God or gods--there are only "demons" in the sense of creations of the human will and imagination. This is the foundational Marxist doctrine of the so-called "ideological superstructure"... And this method of production of ideological superstructures on the basis of will is precisely what we understand by the collective generation of a demon or egregore.
Now, there is the Word, and there are egregores before whom humanity bows down: there is revelation of divine truth, and the manifestation of the will of human beings; there is the cult of God, and that of idols made by man. Is it not the diagnosis and prognosis of the whole history of the human race that at the same time that Moses received the revelation of the Word at the summit of the mountain, that the people at the foot of the mountain made and worshipped a golden calf? The Word and idols, revealed truth and the "ideological superstructures" of the human will, operate simultaneously in the history of the human race. Has there been a single century when the servants of the Word have not had to confront the worshippers of the idols, egregores?
Walter Wink makes similar observations about "the principalities and powers":
None of these "spiritual" realities has an existence independent of its material counterpart. None persist through time without embodiment in cellulose or in a culture or a regime or a corporation or a megalomaniac. An ideology does not just float in the air; it is always the nexus of legitimations and rationales for some actual entity, be it a union or management, a social change group or the structure it hopes to change. As the inner aspect of material reality, the spiritual Powers are everywhere around us. Their presence is real and it is inescapable.
Consequently, battling against these powers and advocating for change demands focusing upon the inner and invisible spiritual dynamics that keep powers structures animated and intact. And as Tomberg has pointed out, this resistance is fundamentally a struggle against idolatry.
Along with Walter Wink, the lawyer and theologian William Stringfellow powerfully described how demonic powers, the egregores of collectives, are at work in social movements and ideologies. Here is Stringfellow:
According to the Bible, the principalities are legion in species, number, variety and name. They are designated by such multifarious titles as powers, virtues, thrones, authorities, dominions, demons, princes, strongholds, lords, angels, gods, elements, spirits…
Terms that characterize are frequently used biblically in naming the principalities: “tempter,” “mocker,” “foul spirit,” “destroyer,” “adversary,” “the enemy.” And the privity of the principalities to the power of death incarnate is shown in mention of their agency to Beelzebub or Satan or the Devil or the Antichrist…
And if some of these seem quaint, transposed into contemporary language they lose quaintness and the principalities become recognizable and all too familiar: they include all institutions, all ideologies, all images, all movements, all causes, all corporations, all bureaucracies, all traditions, all methods and routines, all conglomerates, all races, all nations, all idols. Thus, the Pentagon or the Ford Motor Company or Harvard University or the Hudson Institute or Consolidated Edison or the Diners Club or the Olympics or the Methodist Church or the Teamsters Union are principalities. So are capitalism, Maoism, humanism, Mormonism, astrology, the Puritan work ethic, science and scientism, white supremacy, patriotism, plus many, many more—sports, sex, any profession or discipline, technology, money, the family—beyond any prospect of full enumeration. The principalities and powers are legion.
And following both Tomberg and Wink, Stringfellow goes on to describe how these powers, dark angels and egregores, become locations of idolatry:
People are veritably besieged, on all sides, at every moment simultaneously by these claims and strivings of the various powers each seeking to dominate, usurp, or take a person’s time, attention, abilities, effort; each grasping at life itself; each demanding idolatrous service and loyalty. In such a tumult it becomes very difficult for a human being even to identify the idols that would possess him or her…
